Posts in "Leans Republican"

January 22, 2014

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released his first two TV ads of the election year on Wednesday — positive spots emphasizing that he has utilized his position on Capitol Hill to help Kentuckians in need.

Facing a competitive re-election, the Kentucky Republican’s new ads tout his efforts on behalf of workers who got cancer after being exposed to high levels of radiation at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southwestern Kentucky. One of the workers, Robert Pierce, who suffered from throat cancer, is featured in both ads and can only speak in a whisper.

“These days I don’t I have much of a voice, but I and so many Kentuckians have been helped by someone with a strong voice, Mitch McConnell,” he says. McConnell ran an ad highlighting this same theme at the start of the 2008 election year.

The ads are backed by a “significant, six-figure buy” and will air statewide. McConnell is defending his seat against fellow Republican Matt Bevin in the primary and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The messaging in the race shifts fast enough to cause whiplash. As the top target of both national Democrats and the tea party, McConnell has been charged for being both the biggest obstructionist in Congress and for failing to obstruct President Barack Obama’s agenda enough. Full story

November 14, 2013

If he runs at all, former Sen. Larry Pressler’s, R-S.D., bid for Senate as an independent won’t look like your traditional campaign.

He said his campaign is running on an “idealistic concept” in a Wednesday phone interview with CQ Roll Call. Pressler, 71, referred to a famous line by William F. Buckley about his third-party bid for New York mayor in 1965.

“If I win, I might demand a recount,” Pressler told CQ Roll Call.

Pressler wasn’t even his own first choice to run, but everyone he’s spoken with about it has declined to step forward. Asked if he would be hiring a campaign manager or consulting team, Pressler said no. Full story

In a phone interview with CQ Roll Call on Tuesday, Schweitzer said only that he had “conversations” with Bohlinger about “the good, the bad and the ugly” about the Senate and Washington, D.C. He thinks both Democrats would make “very good senators” and could defeat likely GOP nominee Rep. Steve Daines, but deciding the nominee is up to Montana voters.

November 6, 2013

The candidate: Democratic National Committeewoman Erin BilbrayThe member: Two-term Rep. Joe Heck, a Republican, who won re-election by a 7-point margin last year. The district: President Barack Obama carried the 3rd District by a single point in 2012.

Democrat Erin Bilbray said she will seek support from former President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama in her campaign for 3rd District in the southern tip of Nevada.

“I hope [Clinton] will, and of course I would ask,” Bilbray said in an Oct. 10 interview with CQ Roll Call. She later added that she believes an endorsement from Obama would help her in the district. Full story

Former state Rep. Jennifer Garrison said any campaign help from President Barack Obama would not help her chances of winning the 6th District in southeastern Ohio.

“Obama isn’t very popular in my part of the state, and I respect the office of the presidency of the United States,” Garrison said in an Oct. 8 interview with CQ Roll Call. “But I suspect that the president would not be campaigning for someone unless he thought that would be helpful, and in my case it probably would not.” Full story

October 3, 2013

Montana Lt. Gov. John Walsh will run for Senate, providing Democrats with a key recruit for an open-seat race in a highly competitive state.

“Too many lawmakers back in Washington put their own agendas ahead of their responsibility to their constituents and to all Americans,” Walsh said in an advance statement obtained by the Associated Press.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOWdv1LcCFo&feature=player_embedded Full story

Williams, who left Congress in 1997 after nine terms and would turn 77 before Election Day next year, said he’d been fielding calls urging him to run for three months — though he didn’t say whether any of them came from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Since former Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s surprise decision not to run, a few other prospective Democratic candidates have followed suit. The top names that remain in the recruitment mix include Lt. Gov. John Walsh and state Supreme Court Justice Brian Morris. Full story

July 9, 2013

Former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, a target of state and national conservatives, now officially has a hurdle in his path to the Republican Senate nomination.

Larry Rhoden, the state Senate majority whip, told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that he intends to announce a Senate bid on Wednesday. He’s the first to step forward with a GOP primary challenge to Rounds, whose eight-year tenure in the governor’s office left activists on the right unhappy.

June 11, 2013

Noem announced Tuesday that she won't run for Senate. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Republicans are now on track to avoid a costly, high-profile primary in the South Dakota Senate race next year.

Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., announced Tuesday she will seek re-election rather than take on former Gov. Mike Rounds in the primary for the open seat. Her move clears a major hurdle in the GOP’s path to picking up the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson.

“I am grateful to everyone who has encouraged me and pledged support for a potential campaign for the U.S. Senate,” Noem said in a statement. “However, after spending the weekend discussing our future with Bryon and our children, we decided that right now we are in the best position to serve South Dakota as a member of the U.S. House.”

October 22, 2012

Republican-aligned Crossroads GPS has added California’s GOP-held 36th district to its target list for television advertising spending over the final weeks of the campaign.

The group is spending a total of $2.2 million on TV this week across nine districts, part of an $8.1 million investment in 11 House races that it announced last week. The addition of Rep. Mary Bono Mack’s (R-Calif.) district increases that number to 12 and is further confirmation that the Palm Springs-based district is one of the top battlegrounds in the country.

October 20, 2012

Former President Bill Clinton introduces musician Bruce Springsteen as they campaign for President Barack Obama's reelection during an appearance at Cuyahoga Community College in Parma. Ohio. (Photo by Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call)

Bill Clinton will attend a Southern California rally on Tuesday to formally endorse Democratic Congressional candidates in a region fertile with pickup opportunities for the party.

The former president is scheduled to attend a “California’s Voice” afternoon rally at the University of California, Irvine, a serene, suburban Orange County campus between Los Angeles and San Diego. There he will endorse five candidates either challenging a Republican incumbent or running for an open seat. Full story

The National Republican Congressional Committee hit the airwaves this week on behalf of California Rep. Mary Bono Mack.

It’s the committee’s first independent expenditure in this competitive race. The 36th district was not among either national party committee’s original TV reservations, but the race has now emerged as a battleground.

October 15, 2012

Two internal Democratic polls released today offered the party good news in both defensive and offensive territory in California.

In the Palm Springs-based 36th district, the campaign of physician Raul Ruiz (D) released a poll that found him ahead of Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R), 46 percent to 43 percent, with 9 percent undecided. The poll also offered this encouraging sign: President Barack Obama led Republican nominee Mitt Romney by 5 points. Full story

Is your head spinning yet? The two polls also paint different pictures of the presidential race in this conservative, coal country district in eastern Ohio:

Wilson’s recent poll showed Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama by a single point, 48 percent to 47 percent, according to a campaign aide. Johnson’s poll gave Romney a larger lead, 53 percent to 39 percent.

In 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would have won this redrawn 6th district with about 53 percent of the vote.